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A look back at the art festival’s pivotal years, especially when Mussolini brought Hitler to the exhibition.
By Nina Siegal
Report from Amsterdam
Now in its 60th year, the Venice Biennale is officially the longest-running exhibition of foreign art in the world, spanning 129 years. It originated in 1895, long before and decades before advertising air travel. The year of its inauguration coincided with the screening of the First Celluloid Film.
Meanwhile, the Biennale has gone through seismic social shifts: the fall of European fascism, the beginning and end of the Cold War and many other conflicts, as well as the advent of Futurism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art.
During those moments of change, the Venice Biennale itself reached a global level of political turmoil. Here are some of his defining moments:
After two years of planning through the Mayor of Venice, Riccardo Selvatico, the city celebrated the silver wedding anniversary of King Umberto and Queen Margrethe with the 1st International Art Exhibition of the City of Venice, inaugurated on April 30, 1895. The city’s assets were used as a public garden, the Giardini di Castello, created by Napoleon. Designed as an exhibition of new and recent foreign artists, it attracted more than 200,000 visitors, according to the Venice Biennale’s archives.
Until 1907, a central pavilion exhibited works of art from other European countries. Belgium has built the first independent national pavilion to showcase its country’s work. Then, in 1909, the British, Hungarian and Bavarian pavilions were built for Germany; the French and Dutch in 1912; and the Russian in 1914. Other pavilions would follow.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, of the Futurist Manifesto of 1909, and an organization of like-minded artists, deposited manifestos of the most sensible of the Campanile in St. Mark’s Square. The pamphlet denounced the old behaviour of the city, proposing to burn all the gondolas. and destroy the ruined palaces. It was a way for artists to ask for adherence to modernity and a radical avant-garde.
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